The Creation Controversy: Conclusion

Also in this series:
 
Introduction
Part One: Biblical Authority
Part Two: Authority from Tradition – the Jewish Sages and the Early Church Fathers
Part Three: The Weight of Traditional Views
Part Four: Man’s Fallible Opinions
Part Five: Clues in the Text
Part Six: More Clues in the Text
Part Seven: What are the Days of Genesis?
Part Eight: Misconceptions of Paradise
Part Nine: Life and Death in the Pre-Fall Animal World, I
Part Ten: Life and Death in the Pre-Fall Animal World, II
Part Eleven: The Other Realm and the Other Fall
Part Twelve: Tracing the Advent of Man, I
Part Thirteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, II
Part Fourteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, III
Part Fifteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, IV
Part Sixteen: Was Jesus a Young-Earth Creationist?
Part Seventeen: The Flood of Noah
Part Eighteen: Some Considerations from Science

In the course of this series, I have labored to present plausible understandings of the major themes of the Genesis debate and the scriptures most often brought into contention. In summary then, the most important points to remember are these:

 

1. God communicates with man on man’s level, according to man’s conceptions, and often in the form of revelatory imagery. In so doing, he is not necessarily bothered with correcting inaccuracies in man’s perception of the world.
2. The Bible was written to an ancient, pre-scientific culture with a different understanding of the world than our modern, global, scientifically-informed understanding.
3. The English translation of scripture does not always bring out important nuances in the underlying, original languages. Hebrew in particular has a comparatively small vocabulary, and Hebrew words often have more than one meaning.
4. The debate over Genesis is not a unique debate in the history of the church. A number of contentious theological issues have come down to us through the centuries, with great minds taking opposite positions. Nor are the charges of “heretic” and “not really believing the Bible” unique to this debate, by any means.
5. What one believes about creation does not necessarily impact what he or she thinks about other scriptural matters, including core New Testament doctrines. Allegations that old-earth views amount to an attack on the gospel are specious, sensational, and unnecessarily inflammatory.
6. Scripture does not support the view that man’s intellect is “fallen.” On the contrary, scripture takes a high view of man’s capabilities. It is man’s moral center that is corrupt. God has given us the intellectual ability to comprehend the world in which we live, however imperfectly we have managed this to date. The scientific revolution is proof that man is not an inept, bumbling creature. Furthermore, scripture tells us that man is responsible before God on the basis of what God has made, which demonstrates that man is capable of understanding creation. The scientific revolution has also demonstrated this for us in the fact that Big Bang cosmology has made atheists extremely uncomfortable and has provided tremendous evidences that our universe is fine-tuned for the existence of life forms just like us.
7. Nuanced views of Genesis existed amongst the Jews and the early Christians long before Darwin came on the scene. There were at least three views of creation at the time of Christ. Christians from the earliest times right up through the Reformation period were not averse to looking at scripture in light of what they understood about the natural world.
8. While the views of ancient theologians can be instructive, they did not face the same debate we face today. For them, it was not a matter of “Bible right/science wrong.” We do not know how they would have reacted to modern scientific discoveries, but it is at least possible that they would have delved deeper into scripture in order to re-evaluate their understanding of it when confronted with the evidences of science.
9. It is entirely possible to understand God too literally at times. Christ rebuked his own disciples for this on occasion, and even allowed people to confuse themselves and walk away from him when he might have clarified his teachings easily. He frequently taught in parables—illustrative stories—and selectively explained them to only certain persons. His teachings were deliberately hidden in part, and were deliberately designed to upset particular individuals.
10. Certain scriptures, especially prophetic events, were not entirely understood by the generations that received them; rather, they were meant to be understood at a different time, by a different generation. Some apparent relationships between creation and prophecies surrounding the return of Christ suggest that this may also be true of Genesis.
11. In scripture, the terms translated as “land” and “earth” often simply refer to dry land or to a particular country or region. There is no reason to immediately insist that these terms must refer to the entire landmass of the planet, as is proven by the fact that such uses render many passages absurd. Further, there is no evidence in scripture that the ancients understood the earth as a planet in the way that we understand it today.
12. Scripture often employs hyperbole as a form of emphasis, and in many cases phraseology must be understood within a particular context, such as “the whole world going to be taxed” in Luke’s account of the birth of Christ.
13. One does not have to “stuff millions of years” into scripture to come away with interpretations other than “six days, six thousand years ago.” There are certain internal oddities that suggest that more may be going on with the creation account than immediately meets the eye. Other portions of scripture, such as Job 38-41, bolster this impression. It is this understanding, combined with what we have learned of the physical universe, that leads to old-earth conclusions. The Bible never tells us how old the earth is, nor does it impose any test of orthodoxy on the matter
14. The “days” of Genesis are strongly evidenced to be divine work days, expressed in terms of a standard work week, for two reasons: a) To provide the basis for a calendar system, and b) To do so in a cyclical work/rest framework to which the ancient Hebrews could readily relate. In so doing, God described the creation of the world as a landowner preparing his property to be handed over to a manager, and he ended the account by placing man on the scene and giving him just such a charge.
15. The story of the creation and the Fall of Man was likely compiled by Moses during the time Israel spent wandering in the wilderness, and the parallels between Eden and Canaan are quite strong. The expulsion from paradise was a fitting warning to the Hebrews, as God promised to evict them from their land if they would not obey him, calling their dilemma a choice between life and death, blessing and cursing.
16. The earth of Adam and Eve was not one vast paradise. The Garden of Eden was a place of special blessing and abundance, although it was still subject to the laws of physics and required care. God commanded Adam to care for the garden and to maintain it. The underlying Hebrew also suggests that Adam was to protect the garden. By contrast, however, God commanded that the land outside of the garden be forcefully subdued.
17. The prophesied Millennial Age will restore the Edenic dichotomy: Jerusalem and the land surrounding it will be blessed with particular abundance, health, and safety, whereas Christ will rule over the outside nations by force.
18. There is no evidence whatsoever in scripture that animals were immortal before the Fall of Man. For that matter, Adam and Eve were not immortal, either, as they required access to the Tree of Life to maintain themselves.
19. There is no evidence whatsoever in scripture that animals were cursed with death or endowed with predatory behavior as a result of the Fall of Man. Animal attack and defense capabilities give every appearance of having been purposefully designed and built into them from the beginning. Adam’s sin is said only to have brought death upon mankind. Animals are not “cursed” with death because it is their natural condition. By contrast, Adam and Eve did not have to die. They held a special status in the creation until they forfeited it through disobedience.
20. There is no evidence in scripture that the entire physical universe “fell” when Adam sinned. The curses of Genesis 3 are very specific. The curse on the ground is said only to have affected man’s labor for food and does not appear to have continued after the flood. The subjection of the creation to “futility” is explainable as the earth having been left under the inept management of fallen man.
21. The phraseology used in Genesis where God tells man that he has been given green plants for food just as the animals have been given them is perfectly explainable as God pointing out the particular animal behavior that he wanted man to emulate. It does not justify the assumption that all animals ate only plants. Most animals do eat some form of plant life, but we do not know what animals man was familiar with when this commandment was given. Furthermore, even some young-earth creationists have acknowledged that sea creatures may have been predatory from the beginning.
22. Many stories in the pages of scripture show us that God is perfectly willing to use, and even to ordain, things that are not good in and of themselves in order to bring about results that are in fact good. God’s pronouncement that the creation was “very good” should not be taken to mean that it lacked any characteristics that we might find objectionable, such as animal mortality, but simply indicates that it was suitable for its intended purposes. God is following a plan that is fully known only to himself, and until it is complete there is no justification for assuming that we know enough of what God is doing to authoritatively declare that he couldn’t have designed anything but a harmless creation.
23. Angels were the first intelligences created by God. They are employed by him in carrying out his will in a variety of ways and scripture tells us that God is demonstrating certain things to them in his dealings with mankind. Scripture provides hints that angels could have assisted in carrying out God’s creative decrees, and this may be a major factor in why the process of creation stretched over long ages of time. Yet, we know almost nothing about the history of angels or the full extent of what they do. This is a major gap in our understanding of creation and another reason why should we not be so quick to assume that we understand everything God is doing in creation now or did in the past.
24. It is indisputable that some biblical genealogies do contain gaps. Whether the Genesis genealogies contain gaps or not is debatable, but it is possible. Biblical genealogies, including those in Genesis 5 and 11, do not always list first-born sons first. Instead, they prioritize the records around especially important ancestors. The terms “father” and “begat” or “became the father of” do not always indicate direct ancestry in scripture. Consequently, there may be undetectable gaps of time in the Genesis genealogies. It cannot be ruled out.
25. The Genesis creation account, including where the creation of Adam and Eve is concerned, is strongly indicated to be a material origins account. Although it contains a degree of theological messaging and some appeals to the understandings of a pre-scientific culture, scripture is nonetheless describing real people and real events.
26. There is no need to push Adam and Eve back in time beyond a reasonable reading of the Genesis genealogies in order to account for scientific findings related to the origin of man. A two-population model of humanity accounts for the discrepancy and may be hinted at in scripture itself. Even if one dismisses these hints, however, this does not mean that Adam and Eve were necessarily the first human beings. Scripture is primarily the story of the Adamic race and does not focus on any other races of man that may have existed in the past.
27. In light of a two-population model of human origins, Adam was a type of Christ. He was the first man in the Messianic line, specially created to more closely resemble Jesus Christ, who was virgin-born into an existing population and became “the last Adam.” Recent research highlighted by Dr. Joshua Swamidass shows that, even assuming a two-population model, Adam and Eve could well have been the genealogical ancestors of every human being by 1 A.D., which would help explain why Christ was not sent for so long. “The fullness of time” in which he came may indicate the time by which all of humanity was finally united in the ancestry of Adam and Eve.
28. The reference Christ made to male and female being joined together “from the beginning” is not an endorsement of young-earth creationism. Man was not created at the beginning of the creation but rather at the end of the process, as even young-earth creationists acknowledge. When we understand the entirety of the creation week as “the beginning,” the statement of Christ poses no problem for an old earth paradigm.
29. The phraseology of the flood account in Genesis 6-9 matches closely with language employed elsewhere in scripture that is only reasonable in a limited context, suggesting that the flood could well have been regional rather than global. The dimensions of the ark, the depth of the flood, and the recession of the flood waters indicate that the ark ran aground on land that was not much higher in elevation than the surrounding region. Further, we do not see any hints of typical young-earth interpretations in the flood account itself, such as the raising and lowering of land masses.
30. Scientific findings concerning the nature of the universe are entirely consistent with great age and match well with the predictions of Big Bang cosmology. Stellar z-axis motion and colliding galaxies are ready examples of findings in nature that also support “deep time” measurements. The physics and features of our universe are not consistent with a young-earth paradigm. Indeed, young-earth creationists have conceded that there is abundant evidence for great age in materials collected from both the earth and extraterrestrial sources, and they are unable to offer credible explanations for this phenomenon. Instead, they resort to emphasizing their interpretation of scripture while arguing for divine intervention on a massive yet undetectable scale—and with no apparent purpose other than to endow creation with a false appearance of age.

 

I have written this series in a spirit of “Come, let us reason together.” I have friends and family members who are young-earth creationists, and I respect their beliefs and their right to hold those beliefs. At one time, I shared those beliefs, and I understand why many Christians continue to find them compelling.

What I have sought to do here is to present a respectful, coherent, biblically-based case for an alternative point of view, and I offer it up to the Lord for whatever use he may have for it. I can only ask that my young-earth brethren consider the case fairly and in the spirit in which it is offered; and whether you agree with it or not, let us be careful to extend godly grace to one another in the midst of our discussions. Although we may have different creation creeds, we have one Lord to whom we must all give account, and one everlasting gospel to share with the world before he returns.

Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that with one purpose and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us, for the glory of God. – Romans 15:5-7

 

Next in this series: Recommended Resources

The Creation Controversy, Part Eighteen: Some Considerations from Science

Also in this series:

Introduction
Part One: Biblical Authority
Part Two: Authority from Tradition – the Jewish Sages and the Early Church Fathers
Part Three: The Weight of Traditional Views
Part Four: Man’s Fallible Opinions
Part Five: Clues in the Text
Part Six: More Clues in the Text
Part Seven: What are the Days of Genesis?
Part Eight: Misconceptions of Paradise
Part Nine: Life and Death in the Pre-Fall Animal World, I
Part Ten: Life and Death in the Pre-Fall Animal World, II
Part Eleven: The Other Realm and the Other Fall
Part Twelve: Tracing the Advent of Man, I
Part Thirteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, II
Part Fourteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, III
Part Fifteen: Tracing the Advent of Man, IV
Part Sixteen: Was Jesus a Young-Earth Creationist?
Part Seventeen: The Flood of Noah

Thus far, I’ve been looking at the creation controversy in light of what we can learn from scripture rather than from science, as scripture is the most important aspect of the debate for believers. That said, however, as I have already discussed, our understanding of scripture is to at least some degree informed by our understanding of the natural world.

God has created us to live in this world and to interact with it, which necessitates that we have the capacity to understand it. I do not claim that scientists don’t make mistakes or that humanity will ever attain a perfect understanding of nature on this side of the kingdom, but scripture itself bears out the fact that humanity is not a race of imbeciles. The technological achievements of this age demonstrate that we are quite capable when it comes to analyzing the creation, discovering the mechanisms that drive it, and applying what we learn to various useful applications. The impact of modern science has been nothing short of a revolution in human affairs.

While I have had an avid interest in science all of my life—astronomy in particular—I am not a scientist. I do not have the academic background and technical expertise required to evaluate scientific literature or experimental methods and findings in any real depth. Even speaking as a layman, however, I do have a sufficient understanding of scientific theories and discoveries to offer some informed observations that may be of interest to other laymen observing this debate in the church. To that end, I present a few of what I feel are perhaps the most compelling evidences for an old cosmos, followed by a look at one prominent young-earth scientific project and the results it produced.

A Waste of Space?

The renowned astronomer Carl Sagan once remarked: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Were he alive today, Sagan might very well recant this statement. As our knowledge of the universe has expanded, we’ve learned that its fundamental structure, including the amount of mass it contains, is in fact critical for life. The matter-energy ratio of the universe is perfectly balanced with its expansion rate within a remarkably narrow range. This state of affairs has resulted in the right materials being available in the right proportions over the right amount of time to assemble atoms, light and heavy elements, stars, planets, and galaxies.[1]

Simply put, there is no waste of space here. The universe must exist as it does—and must have existed for as long as it has—in order for us to exist as we do. Evidence such as this has allowed Christian apologists to appeal to the element of fine-tuning in making the case for theism.

As I discussed in chapter four, the implications of Big Bang cosmology have proven disquieting for atheists, to the point where they are seeking proof of alternative theories such as the Multiverse Hypothesis in order to circumvent the need for a beginning and to downplay the significance of fine-tuning. The universe gives every appearance of having been “programmed,” as it were, from the very beginning, to produce the conditions we find in it over a time period that exactly corresponds to its observed age.

In a young-earth paradigm, however, I would expect things to be quite different. With all of the elements necessary to life and living already present from the very beginning, the great mass of the universe would not be necessary to produce or maintain anything. Indeed, why should anything beyond about 6-10,000 light years even exist in a young cosmos brought to full maturity in six calendar days? Not only should we not expect to find evidence of great age in the universe, it seems that we ought to find ourselves in a relatively small and static universe, one in which the laws of nature are designed around station-keeping. Why should the vast bulk of the universe even exist in that paradigm? What purpose would it serve? Very few objects beyond our own Local Group of galaxies are even visible from earth or distinguishable as anything more than star-like or cloud-like objects without a telescope.

It may be answered here that “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and this is reason enough for us to find ourselves in an enormous universe full of stars and galaxies: so that we might appreciate the majesty of the Creator. It is certainly true that the wonders of the universe do cause us to stand in awe of its Creator; however, I remind the reader that this scripture was written during a time when men could see only naked-eye objects and the majority of the universe lay unknown and unknowable. Even the magnificent details of nearby objects like the Orion Nebula were lost for the lack of instruments with which to observe them properly. But then why should the Orion Nebula even exist? Why should any gas or dust clouds exist? They’re not needed to produce stars, after all, since God supposedly created everything in place and in a mature state of being. They do make for lovely images, if you have the technology with which to observe them, but mankind didn’t have this technology for most of its history.

As of this writing, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of 4,306 exoplanets—that is to say, planets that orbit other stars.[2] Yet, why should exoplanets even exist in a young-earth, six-calendar-day creation? What benefit do they provide? They do not give light on the earth, nor do they serve for signs or seasons, to put things in the language of creation Day Four. In fact, they are only detectable with extremely sensitive equipment. They make perfect sense in an old universe defined by Big Bang cosmology: a universe in which God took the time to carefully craft humanity’s home and countless stars have formed, generating their own solar systems in the process. In the young-earth paradigm, however, they make no apparent sense at all. Nor do black holes, magnetars, quasars, pulsars, neutron stars, or even asteroids and comets (essentially space debris) or dwarf planets within our own solar system. None of these objects have any apparent function or explanation in a young-earth, six-calendar-day, fully mature creation scenario.[3]

Stellar Z-Axis Motion

Just as the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun, so the sun is orbiting the center of our galaxy. If you want to get an idea of what this entails, imagine the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a medium-sized spiral galaxy, oriented in such a way that you can see it edge on (you can find such images of spiral galaxies with a simple search online). Seen edge on, our galaxy has a classic flying saucer shape: more or less a pancake with a bulge in the center. Now imagine a horizontal line drawn through the middle of the saucer so that it splits the galaxy evenly in half. This line is what you might call the galactic plane or equator. The sun follows this course in its orbit around the center of the galaxy, as do the other stars that comprise the Milky Way.

The sun does not follow this orbit in a perfectly straight line, however. Instead, it dips slightly above and below the galactic equator. This type of movement is what we call the sun’s “z-axis motion.” As a result of this motion, the bulk of the galaxy lies between our solar system and the center of the galaxy, thus shielding us from harmful radiation emitted by occasional supernova explosions and the energetic core of the galaxy, which lies about 26,000 light years away.

In his book Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home, Dr. Hugh Ross observes that our sun, unlike many other stars, does not wander very far either above or below the galactic equator, at least as compared with most other stars. This means that, in comparison with other star systems, our solar system enjoys ideal protection from radiation hazards.[4] He further notes that, at this moment, our solar system is located where that degree of protection is close to “maximal.”[5]

All of this is marvelous evidence of God’s provision for our little world, but it only makes sense within an old-earth paradigm. The fact that the sun does not wander far from the galactic equator only protects us in a long-term scenario because the wandering process takes millions of years. If the earth were only 6-10,000 years old, the sun could have a relatively wild z-axis motion and it wouldn’t matter to life on earth because we would not have been around long enough for the sun to carry the solar system into a zone where it would be at risk. The fact that the sun has just the right z-axis motion to protect the solar system over a period of tens of millions of years strongly indicates that those timescales are real.

Colliding Galaxies

When we look out into the universe, we find galaxies that are actively colliding with one another and others that appear to have collided at some point in the past. Many of these galaxies are misshapen, and we sometimes see trails of stars, gas, and dust linking them to one another. When we consider how far apart these galaxies are (those not currently interacting, that is) and how quickly they are moving with respect to one another, it’s immediately apparent that a great amount of time has passed—at the very least, hundreds of thousands of years. In this sense, colliding galaxies are a type of universal timepiece and strong evidence for an old universe.

An Interstellar Visitor

In October of 2017, astronomer Robert Weryk at the Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii spotted an unusual object now known as ‘Oumuamua. While scientists have not been able to determine exactly what ‘Oumuamua is, the object’s speed and trajectory reveal that it originated in another solar system.[6] In fact, ‘Oumuamua is the first object astronomers have spotted that they’ve since confirmed to be from another solar system. This realization led the International Astronomical Union to create a new naming categorization: “I,” for “interstellar.” ‘Oumuamua is designated 1I—the first object of confirmed interstellar origin.

‘Oumuamua entered our solar system traveling approximately 58,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the fastest space probe ever launched—the New Horizons probe that imaged Pluto in 2016—is traveling at 52,000 miles per hour. At this speed, New Horizons took over nine years to reach Pluto, which was three billion miles from the sun at the time of their rendezvous. At this same speed, New Horizons would take approximately 54,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, which lies 4.22 light years, or about 25 trillion miles, away. Scientists have already determined that ‘Oumuamua could not have traveled to our solar system from any of the closest twelve star systems,[7] meaning that, at minimum, the object has been traveling for hundreds of thousands of years.[8]

Here again we have an object that, given a young-earth paradigm, really should not exist, but is perfectly in line with modern cosmological observations, theories, and predictions. Young-earth creationists have speculated as to various ways distant starlight might have arrived on earth in a 6,000-year timeframe, but ‘Oumuamua is a physical object with a known velocity. There are no stars close enough to us to get it here within 6,000 years.

Unless one wants to argue that God created miscellaneous debris to drift between the stars for some reason, we really have no choice but to conclude that ‘Oumuamua really has been traveling the cosmic night for far longer than young-earth creationism allows.

Thousands…Not Billions?

In the early 2000s, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) commissioned a group of scientists known as the RATE team (RATE - Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) to re-evaluate radiometric dating results for various rock samples in an effort to produce hard evidence for its belief that the earth is only around 6,000 years old. The results of the RATE study were eventually published in a book entitled Thousands…Not Billions.

Oddly enough, and quite obviously contrary to ICR’s intent, Thousands...Not Billions helped to finally cement my conversion from young-earth to old-earth creationism. By the time I read the book, I was already convinced that the biblical text did not require a young-earth interpretation, but I was still hung up on a few questions. For that reason, when a representative from Answers in Genesis stopped by our church one Sunday in 2006, I picked this book up from his table and quickly got into it.

I don’t know that I have ever been more simultaneously disillusioned and enlightened than I was while reading this book. In short, Thousands…Not Billions is a capsule look at the young-earth community’s approach to science in general, and is worth showcasing here for that reason.

RATE collected and tested various rock samples from sites that had been dated previously using conventional radiometric dating methods, the validity of which young-earth organizations consistently and vociferously dispute. This seemed like a sound enough approach to me. After all, if conventional dating methods were reliable, they should hold up under repeated testing—and hold up they did. While the samples studied by RATE sometimes returned dates that were in fact different than those of previously published studies (even markedly different), I was impressed by the fact that they still consistently added up to many millions of years. The differences found were nowhere near the orders of magnitude necessary to bring the dates down to a young-earth timeframe. The RATE team had to admit that eons worth of radioactive decay actually appear to have taken place on the earth and in the local universe as well.

 

The history of radioactive decay is amply demonstrated by accumulated daughter decay products in close association with their parent isotopes in many earth materials. There are also vast numbers of defects caused by nuclear decay in crystalline rocks, including radiohalos and fission tracks. We assume that the earth was not created with an appearance of age at this microscopic level of detail…[9]

 

Radioisotope studies of lunar rocks and meteorites also yield ancient radioisotope ages.[10]

Faced with results confirming that long ages worth of radioactive decay was indeed indicated by study samples, the RATE team postulated that periods of accelerated nuclear decay must have taken place in the distant past:

 

If the earth’s age truly is only thousands of years instead of multi-billions, then nuclear decay was greatly increased, in some cases a billion-fold or more.[11]

 

In the conventional timescale, the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras alone span more than four hundred million years. The RATE research concludes that accelerated nuclear decay on this scale occurred during the single year of the Flood...[12]

This proposal—vastly accelerated nuclear decay, “in some cases a billion-fold or more”—is the only possible way in which the scientific data can be reconciled with young-earth theological interpretations outside of the classic “appearance of age” argument. In fact, given that extraterrestrial materials such as moon rocks also evidence great age, RATE suggests that “the concept of accelerated nuclear decay needs to be extended to include the solar system and space beyond. Indeed, half-life alteration appears to be a cosmic or universe-wide phenomenon.”[13]

The idea of accelerated nuclear decay may sound like an attractive solution at first, but it is fraught with difficulty, as the team itself admitted. For instance, the team observed that the heat released by accelerated nuclear decay on the level their speculation requires “could melt or even vaporize the earth.”[14] Yet, they also admitted that the samples they examined “have not experienced excessive heating.”[15] In other words, while there is abundant evidence that millions of years of nuclear decay have taken place in the earth (and on the moon and elsewhere as well), there is no corresponding evidence that this decay took place in the dramatically accelerated manner required to reconcile scientific findings with a young earth.

So, what happened to all of that heat—heat sufficient to “melt or even vaporize the earth”—and more than sufficient to kill every living thing on the Noah’s ark during the flood? The RATE team speculates that “cosmological or volume cooling, the rapid result of an expansion of space” may have occurred during times of accelerated nuclear decay in order to dissipate the heat.[16] As for the ark, they speculate that “The water barrier between the ark and the earth’s rock layers could have played a major role along with divine intervention” in safeguarding the ark’s cargo.[17]

Thus, the RATE team was forced to concede that the physical evidence (including the testing of materials recovered from bodies outside of the earth) is solidly on the side of an ancient universe, right down to the microscopic level. This must have been a difficult admission for them to make given the expectations associated with their project, their mistrust of mainstream scientific methods, and their confidence in the accuracy of their biblical interpretations. It must also have made them rather uncomfortable to so confidently assert that God must have accelerated nuclear decay rates in the past when they were unable to offer any suggestions as to why he might have done so. This issue is included with what they term “basic unanswered questions” on page 180 of the book.

Could God potentially do such a thing: produce accelerated nuclear decay while leaving no trace of it in the earth’s crust? Yes, of course; but, again, why would he do it? RATE has no answers for us here; yet they affirm that he must have done so because their interpretation of scripture leaves them with no choice but to conclude this. They have a theory to offer, but they can offer no reason for its necessity and no actual evidence of its occurrence. They do argue that they feel there is too much helium in zircons for the minerals to have existed for any more than 6,000 years +/- 2,000 years, given known, consistent nuclear decay rates, but I am not aware of even a single scientist outside of the young-earth camp who either concurs with their methodology and findings in this matter or even considers the issue doubtful.[18]

Furthermore, consider the plausibility of RATE’s take on accelerated nuclear decay during the flood. They argue that the waters of the flood and the earth’s own rock formations could have protected Noah and his family, but if the heat released by exponentially accelerated nuclear decay has the potential to melt or vaporize the planet itself, how was a relatively thin layer of water supposed to offer any real protection?

Additionally, if God’s intent in sending the flood was simply to kill everything living on the surface of the earth with water, why would he need to accelerate nuclear decay rates in the first place? The end result was merely to make the earth appear older than it is—for no evident reason, and with no trace of its occurrence; and why would he also accelerate nuclear decay rates on bodies beyond the earth, where there was no flood?

As I finished reading Thousands…Not Billions, I could find no reason why God would have accelerated nuclear decay rates except to deliberately make the universe look older than it is, right down to the microscopic level, as the RATE team itself observed. There was no halfway compelling reason to accept the RATE team’s theories that didn’t boil down to maintaining a particular interpretation of scripture, which I had already realized wasn’t necessary. I closed the book thinking that these well-meaning young-earthers had not only failed to produce evidence in their favor but had actually ended up lending more credibility to the old-earth position.

Conclusion

While I have only just scratched the surface of the scientific aspect of the creation controversy in this chapter, the evidences offered here are strongly compelling indicators that we live in a truly old universe. The physics of the universe, observed conditions within it, and scientifically-tested dating methodologies all correspond exactly as they should. The only alternative is to believe that God has somehow deliberately engineered the universe with an appearance of age at every level, and in some cases (such as with the sun’s z-axis motion and colliding galaxies) did so long before mankind had developed the technology to investigate such matters. This is rather like a father writing a contradictory poem on the day his child is born, and leaving it in a place where the child will find it decades later only to be utterly bewildered and misled by it. What would a rational mind gain from mounting such a production? The young-earth approach to science is inherently tied to the perceived need to defend a particular interpretation of scripture. Young-earth teachers routinely decry “man’s flawed methods,” but they selectively confine such flaws to the realm of science and to theological opinions that differ from their own. Quixotically, the scientists they criticize as being apostles of deception have produced the most compelling evidences available to support the biblical claim that we live in a universe that had a definite beginning and is uniquely fine-tuned to support life forms just like us.

 

Next in this series: Conclusion 

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[1] For a lay-friendly secular source on cosmic fine-tuning, see: Ethan Siegel, “The Universe Really Is Fine-Tuned, And Our Existence Is the Proof,” Forbes, December 19, 2019.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/12/19/the-universe-really-is-fine-tuned-and-our-existence-is-the-proof/

For a Christian perspective, see: Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016). This book by Dr. Ross is probably the best creation resource I have ever found, as it explains in great detail the pain-staking process through which our planet was made suitable for life, using mainstream scientific resources.

[2] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/discovery/exoplanet-catalog/

[3] See chapter six for a thorough discussion of the effects of the Fall of Man.

[4] Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet, pp. 40-41.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Elizabeth Landau, “What We Know—And Don’t Know—About ‘Oumuamua,” NASA.gov., June 27, 2018.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/473/what-we-knowand-dont-knowabout-oumuamua/

[7] Eric Mamajek, “Kinematics of the Interstellar Vagabond 1I/’Oumuamua (A/2017 U1),” Cornell University, Last revised November 20, 2017.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11364

[8] The twelfth-closest star to our sun (counting Proxima, Alpha, and Beta Centauri as one system, and including brown dwarf Luhman 16) is Ross 128, a red dwarf star located a little over 11 light years from earth.

[9] Don DeYoung, Thousands…Not Billions: Challenging an Icon of Evolution. Questioning the Age of the Earth (Portland, OR: Master Books, 2005), p. 175. Fission tracks are a type of damage left in materials by the nuclear decay process.

[10] Ibid, p. 180.

[11] Ibid, pp. 142-143.

[12] Ibid, p. 151.

[13] Ibid, p. 180.

[14] Ibid. p. 151.

[15] Ibid. p. 180.

[16] Ibid. p. 180.

[17] Ibid. p. 151.

[18] For a lay-friendly look at the problems with RATE’s conclusions about helium in zircons, see Dr. Gary Loechelt, “Helium Diffusion in Zircon: Flaws in a Young-Earth Argument,” Reasons.org (in two parts).

 

https://reasons.org/explore/publications/tnrtb/read/tnrtb/2008/09/09/helium-diffusion-in-zircon-flaws-in-a-young-earth-argument-part-1-of-2